Nigerian Death Toll Rises

The butcher's bill is now 96 and still rising. What started as anti-Christian riots spurred ostensibly by the cartoon publication turned into retribution as Christians took matters into their own hands. This back and forth violence is a regular staple in Nigeria, despite the fact that the media refused to call the original riots anti-Christian while labelling the revenge attacks anti-Muslim.

Residents said soldiers had opened fire on a mob of ethnic Igbo Christians that tried to enter the military barracks after reports ethnic Hausa Muslims sheltering in the barracks had attacked a nearby primary school, killing a number of children.

The claims could not be verified and it was not clear if the soldiers killed anyone in the mob.

The deaths brought to at least 96 the number of people killed in Nigeria since sectarian violence first erupted Saturday in the northern city of Maiduguri, where Muslim protests against cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad turned violent, razing 30 churches and claiming the lives of 18 people, mostly Christians.

Similar violence followed Monday and Tuesday in the northern city of Bauchi, where witnesses and Red Cross officials say 25 people were killed when Muslim mobs attacked Christians there.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country of more than 130 million people, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Thousands of people have died in religious violence since 2000.

The Voice of America says that a curfew instituted when the violence broke out has been somewhat successful. The butcher's bill belies that point.

The Turkish press focuses on the Christian riots that followed the original Muslim riots - noting the death toll in the Christian reprisals.

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